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A Big Bang is a specific type of challenge usually involving long fics and accompanying artwork. This type of challenge is a reprise of the old zine tradition of collaboration between artists and writers for internet fandoms.

Most Big Bangs have a similar format: Writers sign up and begin writing stories. When the early drafts of the stories are available, each one is assigned one or more artists, or artists might claim stories from posted summaries. Artists create fanart to go along with the story. This art can take the form of illustrations, manips, photo collages, vids, icon sets, etc.

In 2008, the Bandom Big Bang provided each story with a soundtrack, rather than artwork, since it seemed more appropriate for a music-based fandom and because fanart is not as common in bandom. There was some fanart produced for the challenge as well.

Some Big Bangs have specific prompts for the authors to work from, or general themes, while others leave everything but the minimum word count up to the individual authors.

However, many fans interpreted the meaning differently than its creators intended, assuming it to mean a big explosion of long fics and art all at once. In an example of fannish drift, it is that meaning that spread to other fandoms,[1] which upset many Harry/Draco fans.[citation needed]

Story Length

The minimum word count for the original 2005 Big Bang, Baby was 50,000 words. In the early years of Big Bangs, many had similar or even longer minimum word count requirements.

In recent years many challenges have cut word length minimums and new challenges have begun with minimums as low as 10,000 words. (See Polyamory Big Bang and Alternate Universe Big Bang as examples of fests with shorter minimums.) The result is a shift in the definition of Big Bang again, away from just novel or near novel-length fiction to fests that include longish short stories. In some cases, this is done simply to ensure lots of signups and that a reasonable percentage of the writers who sign up can complete their story on time.

The definition for what is a long story suitable for a Big Bang, and the length that many writers are willing to commit to varies by fandom.

The Smallville Big Bang in 2006, with a 50,000 word minimum had only 7 finished stories, while the Stargate Atlantis Big Bangs have always had 40,000 word minimums and have produced hundreds of works.

Hosting and Accessibility

Many Big Bangs provide websites or archive space to host the stories and art all in one place, but some leave the hosting up to the participants.

For fandoms centered on journalling sites, a choice has to be made between hosting offsite or keeping the fest on the journalling site itself. The size of the stories in a Big Bang ensures they will require multiple Livejournal posts. Many fests require writers to submit a Master Post to the community and have their actual story hosted elsewhere. Some fests, such as the very large Supernatural J2 Big Bang have been produced almost exclusively on LiveJournal sites, with most of the stories posted on personal journals in multiple parts.[2]

Having stories only exist in multiple journal posts, sometimes as many as a dozen or more, creates problems for people who want to read offline, on an e-reader or use technology like screen readers to access the work. Some authors provide single file formats for download or host their stories at archives that allow for single page viewing. Other fans will create PDF or ebook formats for stories on their own time and make them available.

Archive Of Our Own Collections

AO3 now has a "Collections" feature, allowing fanwork creators to submit their Big Bang works and be archived as a group[3]. The AO3 hosting system automatically makes fanworks accessible to screen readers and offline downloads in various formats.

List of Big Bangs

External Links

bigbangdirectory. This delicious account is run by the former moderators of big_bang_hd, aka the first big bang challenge. This directory only includes big bang challenges which have run, or were at least in-progress at one point.

References

↑In 2011, Morgan Dawn and Amothea set up the Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge master collection on AO3, which although not officially promoted by the challenge moderators, allowed writers to voluntarily add their SPN J2 Big Bang stories to the collections and readers to more easily find them on the archive. Having this collection available may have encouraged more writers to crosspost their SPN J2 Big Bang stories to the AO3.